Penumbra Foundation

Please note that while most students leave with work, the goal of our workshops is to teach participants the necessary and practical steps to practice these processes independently. This includes access to resources and advice on setting up your personal workspace, where to purchase materials and chemistry, and hands-on practice under the guidance of an experienced practitioner. Our workshops are meant to be a first step and learning experience in an encouraging environment, rather than an opportunity to create a body of work.  

Date: June 22 & 23| Saturday and Sunday
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm (1 hour lunch)
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee
Registration deadline extended to:   Friday, June 21

In this course, participants will learn to make photographs by direct contact printing in Platinum/Palladium using a coherent, unified approach from selecting a subject to making the final print. The platinum print boasts a wide, delicate tonal range, and superior stability and longevity than most other processes, which remains true today. Platinum printing was a prevalent process during the pictorialist movement, and practiced by such notable photographers as Alvin Langdon Coburn, Clarence Hudson White, Edward Weston, and Irving Penn.

Date: June 29th & 30th, 2013 | Saturday and Sunday
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm (1 hour lunch)
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee
 Registration deadline: Friday, June 21st

This workshop is an intensive introduction to the silver-based process that was the leading mode of photography in the 1850′s and 1860′s. The process must be completed while the plate is wet; the images are exposed, developed, fixed and viewable within minutes. Workshop participants will learn how to create glass negatives, tintypes, and ambrotypes in camera. We will discuss chemical mixing and safety. Students will learn the techniques of preparing the plate, pouring collodion, exposing, developing, fixing, and varnishing.

Date: July 13 & 14, 2013 | Saturday and Sunday
Time: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm (1 hour lunch)
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 +$100 materials fee | Members: $355.50
+ $100 materials fee
Registration Deadline: July 5th
The Uranium printing process has a significant history behind it. Its use and invention within photography was made in 1858, by Charles Burnett in Scotland. He was able to make prints by using uranium salts teamed up with an Iron developer.Don’t let uranium fool you, its usage stretches throughout history and precedes the nuclear era ideology of radioactivity. We will explore the possibility of this salt and in combination with other precious metals.

Date: July 20, 2013 | Saturday
Time: 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $175 | Members: $157.50
Registration Deadline: Friday, July 12, 2013

This is a six hour shooting day for the wet plate community to interact with other wet plate photographers, as well as an opportunity to practice shooting and troubleshooting the wet plate collodion process. We will provide the cameras, chemicals, tin, glass, and studio, and you provide the inspiration!

Date: Thursday, August 8, 2013
Time: 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $35.00 | Members: $31.50
 Registration Deadline: August 1, 2013

So you’re ready to delve into the world of alternative photography, but not sure which process is for you. You’ve read articles and how-to’s, watched videos, and visited galleries, but you’re still not sure you’re ready to jump into a new process. We get it! There’s nothing like seeing something in person to help you feel out if it is a good fit.

Date: August 10th & 11th, 2013 | Saturday and Sunday
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm (1 hour lunch)
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50+ $100 materials fee
 Registration Deadline: July 26th, 2013

The versatile and painterly Bromoil process is a printing method that combines the arts of photography, printmaking, and painting, and was very popular in the early 1900s. Bromoil was favored by pictorial photographers who used it to add a more artistic rendering to their work. For Pictorialists, creating a unique print was held in high esteem, and with the bromoil process they were able to create prints with such an affected appearance, they were occasionally mistaken for paintings. The bromoil process begins by bleaching a black and white silver gelatin print to remove the silver. Lithographic ink is then applied with a brush or roller to replace the silver in the print. Any color or combination of colors can be used. Each piece is individually inked by hand; therefore no two prints are identical. In this workshop, students will learn to create prints ideal for the bromoil process, and techniques for applying lithographic inks to their prints.

Date: August 17th & 18th, 2013 | Saturday and Sunday
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm (1 hour lunch)
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 Materials Fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee
 Registration deadline: Friday, August 9th

This workshop is a comprehensive look at the collodion process and its effective practice by the modern-day photographer. The predominate mode of photography from its invention in the early 1850′s to its fall from prominence at the turn of the century, the collodion process was a relatively fast and inexpensive means of getting a direct to positive photograph on demand (thus the image was a mirror image, reversed horizontally). Its practitioners effectively make their own film through the coating of a glass sheet or metal plate with the collodion substrate, sensitizing it in a solution of silver nitrate and exposing this plate in-camera while still wet, hence its common moniker “wet plate”.

Date: August 24 & 25, 2013 | Saturday and Sunday
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm (1 hour lunch)
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 +$100 materials fee | Members: $355.50
+ $100 materials fee
Workshop offered through ICP/CAP Partnership
Registration deadline: August 9th, 2013 

The calotype paper negative, the predecessor to traditional film-based photography, was the first viable way to make multiple prints of the same image. At the time of its invention in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, the only other process was the daguerreotype, which produced unique image objects. For those interested in conservation and understanding the evolution of modern photography, the calotype process

Date: September 11, 2013 | Wednesday evening
Time: 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $135 | Members: $121.50
Registration deadline: Wednesday, September 4th

This four-hour program is for shooting and troubleshooting the wet plate collodion process in a community setting alongside other students. This shooting night is for experienced wet plate practitioners who have taken a wet plate workshop and would like more practice. We provide the cameras, chemicals, tin & glass, and studio, you provide the inspiration.

Date: October 5th & 6th | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee
Registration Deadline:  Friday, September 27th

Date: October 5 & 6, 2013 | Saturday and Sunday
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm (1 hour lunch)
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee
 Registration deadline: Friday, September 27th
Offered through ICP/CAP Partnership

This workshop is an intensive introduction to the silver-based process that was the leading mode of photography in the 1850′s and 1860′s. The process must be completed while the plate is wet; the images are exposed, developed, fixed and viewable within minutes. Workshop participants will learn how to create glass negatives, tintypes, and ambrotypes in camera. We will discuss chemical mixing and safety. Students will learn the techniques of preparing the plate, pouring collodion, exposing, developing, fixing, and varnishing.

Date: October 7, 2013 | Monday
Time: 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $95 | Members: $85.50
Registration Deadline: September 30th

The wet plate collodion process doesn’t begin with coating the plate- it begins with mixing the chemistry! Preparing the various chemical solutions used in wet plate collodion photography is an essential step, but is only covered briefly in our workshops to allow for more time practicing shooting and handling plates. Learning the proper mixing techniques will allow you maintain consistency in your chemistry, and control over your craft.

Date: October 12 & 13, 2013| Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 +$100 materials fee | Members: $355.50
+ $100 materials fee
Registration Deadline: September 27th
Offered through ICP/CAP Partnership

Albumen was perfected in 1850, about 25 years after the discovery of light sensitive materials by Niepce and Daguerre. For the first time in photographic history there was a means of inexpensively producing multiple paper based images from a single negative. It became the dominant form of photographic positives from 1855 to the turn of the 20th century when it was eventually replaced with silver gelatin. Prints on albumen produce a wonderful tonal range, with a unique sheen of a pearl essence that no other medium can achieve.

In this workshop, the history of salt prints, as well as the history and process of albumen will be discussed. The students will make albumen prints in accordance with how this artist makes her prints. Students will learn how to make albumen, and coat paper with albumen, then sensitize paper with silver nitrate, print and then learn toning options (actual toning lesson will be with selenium).

Date: October 12 & 13 | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee
Registration Deadline:   Friday, October 4th

Workshop participants will learn how to create glass negatives, tintypes, and ambrotypes in camera. We will discuss chemical mixing and safety. Students will learn the techniques of preparing the plate, pouring collodion, exposing, developing, fixing, and varnishing. Experimentation is strongly encouraged. Workshop participants will be using 35mm SLR cameras and medium format Holgas to make small-format glass negatives and tintypes. All materials including cameras, chemicals, glass, and metal will be supplied.

Date: October 19, 2013 | Saturday
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm (1 hour lunch)
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $195 +$50 materials fee | Members: $175.50 
+ $50 materials fee
Registration deadline: October 11th

This workshop is an investigation into the expressive possibilities of the Cyanotype. Prior to its popularity with the pictorialists, the cyanotype process was used for more scientific endeavors. For example, Anna Atkins’s became famous for her use of cyanograms to document plant life in her book “Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions,” which is considered to be the first book illustrated with photographic images. Blue prints used in architecture also derived from the cyanotype process, which was widely used in architecture before modern means of printing were available, but is still used occasionally today.

Date: October 20, 2013 | Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $195 + $50 materials fee | Members: $175 + $50 materials fee

Registration Deadline: Friday, October 11th
Offered through ICP/CAP Partnership

This workshop is an investigation into the expressive possibilities of the Van Dyke. The Van Dyke Process is based on the argentotype, the first iron-silver process which was invented by the astronomer, chemist and photographer Sir John Herschel (who also discovered the Cyanotype Process). The Van Dyke process gets its name from its similarity in color to the deep brown pigment used by the Flemish painter Van Dyke.

Date: October 19th & 20th | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee

Registration Deadline:  Friday, October 4th
Since calotype paper negatives are often exposed in a dampened state, it becomes difficult to load them in modern film-holders and cameras without contamination. Taking inspiration from Talbot’s early “mouse-trap” cameras and other calotype-era designs, we will use contemporary materials like foam-core and PVC tubing to arrive at whole-plate format box-cameras equipped with an easy-to-make lens, the cameras here being loaded with dampened paper without harm.

Date: October 19th & 20th| Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members $355.50 + $100 materials fee
Registration Deadline:  Friday, October 11th
This workshop is a ‘hands on’ attempt to recreate some of the methods used to create spirit photographs during it’s time as a cultural phenomena. We will look at the history, social context, methodology and armchair psychology behind this compelling phenomena. It is recommended that participants bring photographs and negatives of deceased family or friends.

Date: October 26th & 27th | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee

Registration Deadline:  Friday, October 11th

French paper-negative practitioners are often said to have improved upon Talbot’s original patented calotype procedure. Here, we will use one of earliest and most influential of the French techniques, a paper-negative method pioneered by the husband-and-wife team of Amélie Saguez and Jacques-Michel Guillot in the mid-1840s, and later known as “the Roman Method.”

Date: November 2nd & 3rd | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee

Registration Deadline:  Friday, October 25th
Creating negatives in a digital darkroom has revolutionized the alternative photographic process world where instant edibility and correction can be done in minutes to achieve the perfect negative. During this introduction to digital negatives we will go over how to set up the digital darkroom, scanners, printers, input mediums, software and output media. This technique can be applied to Gum Bichromate, Kallitype, Cyanotype, Platinum, Palladium, VanDyke, Gravure and many other processes.

Date: November 2nd | Saturday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price: $195 + $50 materials fee | Members: $175.50 + $50 materials fee
Registration Deadline:  Friday, October 25th

The “poor man’s platinum print” of the late 1800’s, the Kallitype is a great photographic process for those who want comparable tonal quality of platinum prints on a budget. Kallitypes protect your wallet by using less expensive metals than those used in the Platinum process, while giving similar results. This workshop may appeal to those looking for a more precise brown-print process than Van Dyke. Lots of folks find that the cost-savings built into the Kallitype process allow for free experimentation and fun.

Date: November 6th, 2013 | Wednesday
Time: 6:00pm-10:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price: $90 | Members: $81
Registration Deadline:  Wednesday, October 30th
This is a 4-hour opportunity to practice producing cyanotypes and meet others working with this printing process. This cyanotype open studio night is for cyanotype practitioners who have already taken a cyanotype workshop and would like more practice. We provide the chemicals, paper, UV light source, and studio – you provide negatives and inspiration. There will be no instruction, but a cyanotype practitioner is available for questioning and assistance. You will need to bring your own medium to large-format negatives (digital negatives are fine) or objects with which you would like to make a cyanogram (a cyanotype made by placing objects on the sensitized paper under a UV light source).

Date: November 9th & 10th | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: 355.50 + $100 materials fee

Registration Deadline:  Friday, October 25th

This workshop will be an introduction to the classic and flexible gum bichromate process. During the early 19th century, when photography was largely viewed as clinical, the pictorialist movement aimed to elevate photography to a fine art status.Pictorialists, such as Heinrich Kuhn, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Steichen, used processes like gum bichromate to create textured, artistic images that captured a mood, and advocated that photographers should guide the outcome of their image much the same way that painters do.

Date: November 9th, 10th & 11th, 2013 | Saturday, Sunday & Monday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price: $1,100 + $400 materials fee | Members: $990 + $400 materials fee
Registration Deadline:  Friday, October 25th
Offered through ICP/CAP Partnership

The daguerreotype is an image unlike any other; each is unique and elusive. It was one of the first and arguably most beautiful forms of photography, and yet its technologies are largely forgotten. In this workshop we will learn, practice, and discuss different methods of daguerreotypy with the goal that every participant be able to produce several images, and quickly be on their way to making daguerreotypes on their own.

Date: November 14th | Thursday
Time: 6:30pm-9:30pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price: $75 | Members: $67.50

Registration Deadline:  Thursday, November 7th

Choosing the right lens for a project is one of the most important decisions a photographer can make. This class will discuss how to determine the appropriate focal length and coverage for format and perspective. Lenses covered will be from hand ground 19th century to modern day computer designed objectivesLenses will available for examination as well as sample images taken with these lenses. Students are welcome to bring in their own lenses for discussion.

Date: November 16th & 17th | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price DAY 1: $250 | Member DAY 1: $225
Price DAY 2: $100 | Member DAY 2: $90 (DAY 2 is optional)
Registration Deadline:  Friday, November 8th
This is a demonstration class that will show you how to set up to do the wet plate collodion process at a minimal cost. While many people get into the process at great expense, it is useful and encouraging to know that there is a way to be a wet plate photographer with a small financial outlay.

Date: November 23rd & 24th | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee
Registration Deadline:  Friday, November 8th

In this course, participants will learn to make photographs by direct contact printing in Platinum/Palladium using a coherent, unified approach from selecting a subject to making the final print. The platinum print boasts a wider, more delicate tonal range, and superior stability and longevity than most other processes, which remains true today. Platinum printing was a prevalent process during the pictorialist movement, and practiced by such notable photographers as Alvin Langdon Coburn, Clarence Hudson White, Edward Weston, and Irving Penn. The rich tonal expression, consistency, and detail from highlight to shadow in the platinum print have made it an eduring process among art photographers from in 19th & 20th centuries to the present.

Date: November 20th | Wednesday
Time: 6:00pm-10:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price: $135 | Members: $121.50

Registration Deadline:  Wednesday, November 13th

This is a 4 hour shooting night for the wet plate community to interact with other wet plate photographers, as well as an opportunity to practice shooting and troubleshooting the wet plate collodion process. We will provide the cameras, chemicals, tin, glass, and studio, and you provide the inspiration. This shooting night is for wet plate practitioners who have taken a wet plate workshop and would like more practice. Still life and portrait set ups are possible. There will be not instruction, but a wet plate practitioner is available for questioning and assistance. There will be four cameras, which will be shared, and each participant is allowed to invite only one model for portrait sitting. Note maximum size is 5×7.

Date: November 23rd & 24th | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee
Registration Deadline:  Friday, November 15th
“During the entire period of its history,” states Sandy King in The Book of Carbon and Carbro, “carbon was considered the aristocrat of printing processes.” This class is a thorough introduction to the delightfully versatile carbon printing process, developed in 1855. The carbon process allows the printer to print in a variety of colors and tones on many different surfaces beyond paper.

Date: December 7th, 2013 | Saturday
Time: 10:00 am – 6:00 pm (1 hour lunch)
Location: 36 East 30th Street, New York, NY 10016
Price: $95 | Members: $85.50
Registration deadline: Friday, November 29th
So you’re eager to start practicing in your own darkroom, but can’t quite wrap your head around all of that chemistry stuff. If you want to take that leap into readiness, this is the workshop for you! Post will lead a comprehensive workshop in chemical safety and mixing techniques for 19th century photography in the 21st Century. Mastering these techniques will ensure that you will always be able to create photographic emulsions, regardless of what happens to major film suppliers during the digital revolution. Enter the world of advanced DIY and learn to make your own photographic emulsion!

Date: December 14th & 15th | Saturday & Sunday
Time: 10:00am-6:00pm
Location: 36 East 30th Street New York, NY 10016
Price: $395 + $100 materials fee | Members: $355.50 + $100 materials fee
Registration Deadline:  Friday, December 6th
Would you like to make wet plate tintypes, ambrotypes, and opalotypes from images you already have? Create tangible image objects of your digital work, slides, or any image from which you can create a positive or negative transparency?
This wet plate printing course will be an intensive introduction to the wet plate process that was the leading mode of photography in the 1850′s and 1860′s, combined with the ease and simplicity of working in a contemporary darkroom with enlargers.